Openness to Experience and Intellect Differentially Predict Creative Achievement in the Arts and Sciences

The Big Five personality dimension Openness/Intellect is the trait most closely associated with creativity and creative achievement. Little is known, however, regarding the discriminant validity of its two aspects—Openness to Experience (reflecting cognitive engagement with perception, fantasy, aesthetics, and emotions) and Intellect (reflecting cognitive engagement with abstract and semantic information, primarily through reasoning)—in relation to creativity. In four demographically diverse samples totaling 1,035 participants, we investigated the independent predictive validity of Openness and Intellect by assessing the relations among cognitive ability, divergent thinking, personality, and creative achievement across the arts and sciences. We confirmed the hypothesis that whereas Openness predicts creative achievement in the arts, Intellect predicts creative achievement in the sciences. Inclusion of performance measures of general cognitive ability and divergent thinking indicated that the relation of Intellect to scientific creativity may be due at least in part to these abilities. Lastly, we found that Extraversion additionally predicted creative achievement in the arts, independently of Openness. Results are discussed in the context of dual‐process theory.     

A Theoretical Explanation of the Influence of Gentrification on Neighborhood Crime

Gentrification and other types of neighborhood revitalization strategies have been promoted as viable crime reduction strategies, but empirical assessments of this relationship produced inconsistent results. The mixed results were partly due to a narrow theoretical focus on social disorganization and routine activities, but also because of a limited conceptualization of gentrification. The current study draws on gentrification literature more broadly and incorporates insights from additional criminological theories to provide a more complete understanding of how gentrification is related to neighborhood crime. Specifically, three pathways through which gentrification influences neighborhood crime are identified.     

Next Generation Sequencing in the Clinic: a Patterns of Care Study in a Retrospective Cohort of Subjects Referred to a Genetic Medicine Clinic for Suspected Lynch Syndrome

Next generation sequencing (NGS) gene panels are increasingly used in medical genetics clinics for the evaluation of common inherited cancer syndromes, but the clinical efficacy of these tests, and the factors driving clinical providers to order them are unclear. We conducted a patterns-of-care study to compare patients evaluated with NGS gene panels with a reference group. We abstracted demographic, socioeconomic, and clinical information in a retrospective cohort of patients referred to a large medical genetics clinic for evaluation of inherited colorectal cancer and polyposis syndromes. Patients tested with NGS gene panels were more likely to be insured compared to the reference group (85.3 % vs. 69.2 %, p = 0.0068),less likely to have prior tumor tissue testing (29.4 % vs. 54.3 %, p = 0.0004), and less likely to have an abnormal tumor tissue test result (46.7 % vs. 74.5 %, p = 0.01). No significant differences were found between groups in age, gender, race, employment status, personal history of colorectal cancer, or proportion of patients fulfilling Lynch syndrome clinical criteria. Patients with NGS testing were less likely to have a pathogenic/likely pathogenic variant detected (13.7 % vs. 31.9 %, p = 0.002). Patients referred for NGS testing to evaluate inherited colorectal cancer/polyposis risk appear to undergo tumor tissue testing less frequently than non-NGS testing patients. Further studies are needed to assess the most effective and cost-effective approach to genomic diagnosis in this patient population.     

The Use of Media in Media Psychology

Media psychologists have theoretical interests in both people and media, yet research investments considerably favor subjects over stimuli. An analysis of 306 studies, taken from the journal Media Psychology over the last 10 years, and from the most cited media experiments in other journals, shows that studies invested in tens of thousands of human subjects but the studies used small samples of media material that were often narrow and unrepresentative. The vast majority of experiments (65%) used single examples of media messages per condition yet they discussed large categories of real world media experiences. Analysis of specific selections showed that media represented in research are less variant, nuanced, and idiosyncratic than media found in the real world. Two categories of solutions are discussed. First, new statistical solutions promote more attention to media repetitions analyzed as random factors. Second, we review the advantages of uncommon research designs that emphasize stimulus investments, including single subject designs that collect intra-individual data and that construct unique models using the entirety, rather than samples, of messages that people experience.     

Masked suffix priming and morpheme positional constraints

Although masked stem priming (e.g., dealer–DEAL) is one of the most established effects in visual word identification, it is less clear whether primes and targets sharing a suffix (e.g., kindness–WILDNESS) also yield facilitation. In a new take on this issue, we show that prime nonwords facilitate lexical decisions to target words ending with the same suffix (sheeter–TEACHER) compared to a condition where the critical suffix was substituted by another one (sheetal–TEACHER) or by an unrelated nonmorphological ending (sheetub– TEACHER). We also show that this effect is genuinely morphological, as no priming emerged in noncomplex items with the same orthographic characteristics (sportel–BROTHEL vs. sportic–BROTHEL vs. sportur–BROTHEL). In a further experiment, we took advantage of these results to assess whether suffixes are recognized in a position-specific fashion. Masked suffix priming did not emerge when the relative order of stems and suffixes was reversed in the prime nonwords—ersheet did not yield any time saving in the identification of teacher as compared to either alsheet or obsheet. We take these results to show that –er was not identified as a morpheme in ersheet, thus indicating that suffix identification is position specific. This conclusion is in line with data on interference effects in nonword rejection and strongly constrains theoretical proposals on how complex words are identified. In particular, because these findings were reported in a masked priming paradigm, they suggest that positional constraints operate early, most likely at a prelexical level of morpho-orthographic analysis.     

Descriptive characteristics of extinction bursts: A record review

Procedural extinction is sometimes associated with a temporary increase in responding known as an extinction burst. Extinction bursts present unique challenges in the context of treating behavior targeted for reduction. The present study updates the prevalence of extinction bursts using a clinical sample (N = 108) receiving treatment for targeted behavior. The prevalence of extinction bursts in our sample (24%) was consistent with that in prior literature. The extinction-burst magnitude decreased across sessions after extinction was contacted during treatment, but this sample did not demonstrate decreased persistence or magnitude of extinction bursts across successive transitions from baseline to treatment. We also examined the prevalence and magnitude of extinction bursts based on the function and topography of targeted behavior and treatment components and found no consistent relation among these variables. These findings should lead clinicians to prepare for transient extinction bursts when implementing extinction-based treatment for challenging behavior.